Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

He said, “Can you just shut up and stop talking about ‘smell’?”

She said, “I’m very sorry, but I’m not the one who brought up ‘smell.’”

He said, “Okay, okay, okay. I mentioned it first, but why can’t you see the side of me that values and loves you? Why have you become so cutting and bitter?”

“Maybe I have got bitter—” Tiao said. Right then Fei’s warnings came to mind, which annoyed her and increased her anger. She was no longer the generous, forgiving Tiao who dreamed of saving Fang Jing. Her sense of her role had changed; she was judging his behaviour as Fang Jing’s would-be wife, and it made her cutting. She’d suddenly woken up to certain aspects of their relationship. The more she wanted to establish her everyday, number-one status in Fang Jing’s heart, the less she could accept his “truthfulness” as if she were a stranger to him. His “truthfulness” seemed like domination, a way to demean her rather than a demonstration of respect and trust for a partner. She told Fang Jing, “Maybe I have become bitter, but it’s hard for me to imagine anyone else accepting your truthfulness without getting bitter. Try and find such a person. Go find her …”

He said, “Why talk this way? Where do you want me to find her? How did you get so fussy?”

She despised the word “fussy,” especially the way Fang Jing labelled her with it. She reacted strongly — with panic — to their mutual criticism. To cover the panic, she tried to show her toughness to Fang Jing. She hated the toughness on her side but felt she had to keep going. She said, “Save your ‘fussy’ for someone else. I’m not the housewife in your family.”

Right then, he stopped talking. She had no choice but to ask him again and again, “What’s wrong? Why don’t you say something? Won’t you tell me what you’re thinking?”

He suddenly gazed at her as coldly as if she were a stranger. “I’m thinking of my daughter. I’m thinking that I’ve paid too little attention to her since meeting you. I’m thinking that maybe it’s time for me to go and see my daughter. I’m not a good father.”

It had the sound of self-criticism, but every word struck Tiao’s head and heart because what Fang Jing said about missing his daughter was merely a way to show Tiao her diminished importance and to express his regret about their relationship. She wanted to save their relationship, but, inexperienced as she was, she didn’t know how. Actually, it was a relationship that was headed nowhere, and Fang Jing had just signalled his withdrawal by accusing Tiao of being bitter and fussy. He was tired. She was also tired. He was tired and wanted to withdraw into his unfree sort of loneliness; she was tired but was still frantically willing to dive into the trap.

He was determined to distance himself from her. He had seen the way she’d matured; no longer the clay that he could mould any way he wanted, she didn’t appreciate his truthfulness and argued with him. She was no longer a kitten or puppy that could only nip, and even when it was very angry, the tiny pain it could cause would only remind you to pet it. She was no longer a kitten or a puppy, but a full-grown animal with fur and claws, everything necessary to cause a big stir. Animals of that size wouldn’t be easily controlled and might even turn on you.

He backed away.

Avoiding her, he didn’t take her phone calls or answer her letters. Because of this, Tiao wasted away day after day. She didn’t dare to look at the photographs of herself at the time, where what was left of her seemed to be two large sunken eyes. She suffered from insomnia, lack of appetite, and her hair withered and dried. She went to work reluctantly, and handled her duties at the Publishing House, but the plan for publishing a series of celebrities’ childhoods had disappeared long ago — without her connection with Fang Jing, how could she have any chance of doing it? When she was with Fang Jing, she turned love into her main concern and her profession into a sideline, and now he’d broken up with her as soon as the thought crossed his mind. She had to come up with a topic to work on while waiting for his reply. She considered doing a series called We Reap What We Sow. When the title occurred to her, she was pleased. But then she immediately associated it with her relationship with Fang Jing, which was certainly a we-reap-what-we-sow relationship. And she felt the name was deadly boring. She rejected it but had no other ideas. As she sat in her office, her brain often went blank for long periods.

Ashamed of herself, she stayed away from Fei. After a while, Fei came to the Publishing House to see her. Nothing escaped Fei; Tiao’s haggard, weakened look told her everything had turned out as she’d predicted; only she hadn’t expected it to happen so fast.

She sat across from Tiao, who pulled open a drawer and lowered her head, searching through it. Finally, she took out a bag of dried fish and tossed it to across the desk to Fei. She smiled at Fei, but the tears streamed down her face. They had already been welling up when she lowered her head to rummage around in the drawer. She’d kept her head down for a long time in order to control her tears, which Fei clearly saw dropping into the drawer. Many years before, in the alley in Fuan after the movie, when Fei told Tiao, “I don’t have a mother,” Fei had smiled this way, tears streaming. It was awkward to face dear friends, wanting to let emotions out and also wanting to keep them in. Fei had to move away. She stood up, walked to the window, and looked out for a while. Then she plopped her bottom down on the sill. Back against the window, she faced Tiao, her legs dangling, took out a cigarette, and lit it.

For a moment Tiao felt she was about to scream. Astonishment held back her tears. The office was on the fifteenth floor. Even though the window was closed and the sill was wide, the way Fei sat touched off an intense feeling of disquiet. Tiao couldn’t tell what was off-kilter: The scene outside was stable, the window frame was upright, then was it Fei? Tiao couldn’t say, but she was in the grip of nightmarish anxiety, unreal and real at the same time, just like the dream she kept having. In her recurrent dream, she had a full bladder and had to go to the bathroom. When she finally found one, and opened her legs to squat down, the pit suddenly collapsed and she was stained with shit all over … She suppressed her scream and waved to Fei to come down.

Fei didn’t. She sat on the window ledge and asked Tiao, “What are you planning to do?”

“I love him. I don’t know how I’m going to live without him.”

Fei said, “Do you still think that way?”

“Yes, I still do. Go ahead and yell at me.”

“You’ll die if you continue like this.”

“It’s better to die than live this way.”

Fei said, “You must be crazy.”

Tiao said, “Yes, I’m crazy. Let me go crazy once. What else can I do?”

Fei turned around and pushed the window open with a scraping sound. Wind blew in and lifted some paper on the desk. When Fei turned around, the tears welling in her own eyes were flung out. She didn’t want to cry in front of Tiao, even though Tiao’s emaciation moved her deeply. She jumped down from the windowsill at Tiao’s repeated pleas and said, “I don’t understand why you’re so afraid of me sitting on the windowsill. Do you think a grown person like me would fall out?”

“You won’t fall. You’ll never fall, but — I’m still afraid.”

“Tiao, tell me what I can do for you. Tell me.”

Tiao shook her head.

“I know what you want me to do. You want me to go to Beijing to talk to Fang Jing.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Let’s not waste time. Give me his phone number and address. I’ll go see him for you.”